


The Mayor and the Queen

by midnight_marimba



Category: Dragon Quest XI
Genre: Come for the absurd politics, F/F, Future Fic, Jade has a daughter, Jade has an annoying ex-husband, Ladies as Leaders, Stay for the chimney incident, background Luminerik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25144060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnight_marimba/pseuds/midnight_marimba
Summary: Queen Jade’s doing all right for her kingdom these days, but it’s always a relief to get a visit from Cobblestone, meaning she can finally relax and enjoy the company of old friends who are willing to drop the title.Of course she’s glad to see El and Erik, but sometimes the highlight of the visit is getting to chat with Mayor Gemma to chat about the (occasionally ridiculous) business of leading people.  Today, though, Gemma seems to have something else on her mind.
Relationships: Marutina | Jade/Emma | Gemma (Dragon Quest XI)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10
Collections: DQXI Hot Girl Summer





	The Mayor and the Queen

“Heliodor greets the delegation from Cobblestone,” Jade said formally.

“Cobblestone greets Heliodor,” El and Gemma chorused in unison. Erik fidgeted impatiently at El’s side.

“Have you business before the court today?”

“Our only public business is to announce the dates of the harvest festival.” Gemma rattled off the details and made her open invitation, offering an aggressively friendly smile for the finely dressed lords and ladies in attendance. Gemma herself wore homespun cloth that certainly was made from Cobblestone wool, not the imported fine silk from Hotto that most of the nobility favored these days, but it was brightly embroidered, and Jade knew Gemma had made it herself, and in Jade's opinion, it was easily as beautiful a garment as any other in the room. She halfway hoped someone would try one of their snide comments about it so Jade had an excuse to speak her mind on the matter.

But it seemed the current audience had learned to mind their manners when it came to Cobblestone, and the only reaction was a scattering of polite nods. Jade nodded, herself, then waved a hand. “Thank you. I believe that concludes today’s business. Everyone who isn’t family and isn’t from Cobblestone, please leave us.”

The assorted nobles obediently filed out of the room, long since having learned better than to argue over "peasants" getting extra attention from the crown. The guards followed them out and shut the door behind them.

“Uncle El! Uncle Erik! Gemma!” Jade’s daughter nearly leapt out of the chair she’d occupied at Jade’s side and dashed forward with arms extended.

Jade watched the group greet her daughter, and she smiled. The girl wasn’t precisely lacking for adult attention, despite her father’s absence, not with Hendrik doting on her and all of the staff assigned to her care and education, but it was still wonderful to see her with her uncles from Cobblestone.

Of course, the stray thought of her ex wormed its way under Jade’s skin and irritated her, just a little, as always. Certainly she could never regret the fact of her child, but she’d sworn an oath to herself that she was never going to let her own daughter feel pressured to marry only for the sake of strengthening a political alliance.

Jade hadn’t thought to become Queen so soon, but as soon as she had, she’d felt she needed to follow in her own parents’ footsteps and put duty above all else. She’d felt that her fierce need to do right by her kingdom was surely as worthy a guiding factor as any other emotion, and she’d been feeling a little desperate for a solution that would quiet the pointed barbs about an untried princess trying to hold the throne alone after so many years apart from her kingdom. Soliciting the direct alliance of the most powerful noble family in Heliodor appeared to be a clear win with no real downside, to her inexperienced eye.

She had met her husband-to-be at a handful of formal events beforehand. It wasn't as if she'd married a complete stranger. But when Sylv had asked her, "When did you fall in love?" she’d had to change the subject, because it hadn't exactly happened. The best she was hoping for was to build on the friendly mutual respect she believed they’d begun to establish.

There were worse versions of a political marriage, after all. And she'd thought it was going to be just fine, really. She'd defended him to her friends, gone in determined to make it work, and she'd even managed to find him appealing for a few days of their marriage.

It was fortunate, she often thought after that, that a few days was all it took to achieve her heir, because upon closer inspection, the man turned out to be an insufferable bore. He knew approximately three jokes, and his only real talent was looking pretty, in a cold, smug sort of way. Maybe he’d invoked her old childhood adoration for Jasper via an initial superficial similarity, but he hadn’t even come close to her memory of Jasper’s wit or competence.

Jade herself hadn’t returned to Heliodor as a grown woman with all the knowledge a ruler needed, of course; the gossip wasn’t wrong about that. But at least she’d made a serious effort to learn, and she thought she was getting to be adequate at the job. This man clearly hadn’t spent a day in his life learning the skills necessary in order to contribute to the business of leading a country, though he was happy enough to order the serving staff around until they stopped smiling at him.

Jade stopped smiling at him around the same time.

She’d been genuinely delighted to catch him one day in a closet with Faris, because it meant she had an iron-clad excuse to get him out of her life without anybody trying to start a war over it. The fact that she had an incident to hold over Faris’s head was just a bonus.

“And how are you doing, Your Majesty?”

Jade blinked, startled out of her thoughts, and she turned and smiled. “Please, Gemma. I was sure we were past that.”

Gemma laughed. “Sorry, Jade. I always second guess it when you’re wearing the crown and all.”

“To tell you the truth, I forget when I’m wearing it, anymore. But we have the room to ourselves right now, so there’s nobody who’s going to give you so much as a rude look for breaking with tradition and making me feel like a human being.”

“Oh, dear. I’ll try harder to stick to Jade, I promise. The name, I mean.” Gemma smoothed a hand nervously over her colorfully embroidered bandana, apparently taking the correction harder than Jade had meant it.

“It’s all right!” Jade said, laughing. “Even Hendrik still slips up every once in a while.”

“Where is Hendrik, anyway? We all love getting to see him, too.” Gemma suddenly smiled, and she leaned a little closer to say in a low voice, “The boys brought a frog to hide in his pocket this time.”

Jade put a hand over her mouth to hide a grin. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted. He should be here before dinner. He had to go out and check on a situation between a couple of the noble families in the country.”

“Oh? That sounds ominous.”

“Stupid, more like. One of them built a gazebo right on the border of their territory, and the other insists that it crosses the line between them, so it should belong to them.”

“At least they didn’t try to burn it down, I suppose,” Gemma said with a wry smile.

“Apparently, it’s a very nice gazebo.”

“Why did the mighty Sir Hendrik have to go there?”

“Well, apparently both families keep sending more and more people to try and sit in the gazebo. Fully armed. Without sleeping.”

Gemma snorted. “Sounds like they’re already punishing themselves for being dunderheads.”

“True, and I won’t say I’m not amused to imagine them dancing around trying not to be the first side to need a trip to the loo. But it would be a huge nuisance if somebody draws a sword, and something happens, and then those particular families can’t get along with each other for the next century.”

“Hmm. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, yet. Hendrik’s going to try and send them home today, but I can’t imagine it’ll last.” Jade sighed. “Maybe I should have told Hendrik to torch the thing, so they’ll all be mad at me instead of each other.”

Gemma shook her head, smiling. “Shame to wreck a very nice gazebo. What if you made them build a little wall through the middle of it? Then each family gets half and nobody can complain. Or you could make a law that says they have to swap ownership back and forth between them for an equal amount of time.”

“Hmm. Those are both excellent ideas,” Jade said, then shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know why I don’t ask you to visit more often so I have more opportunities to pick your brain. It’s hardly the first time you’ve come up with something clever. You don’t think it’s a bit much to make it a full law, though?”

Gemma shrugged. “There’s loads of weirder little laws than that. Like the one that says people can’t wear hats when they’re standing on top of a church. And the one that says you can’t walk backwards to exit a second-story balcony door.” She absently ran her fingers over her bandana again. “I guess I can almost see how they might have come up with that one, but I’m none too sure that the people who would know about the law are the ones in the most danger of falling over the railing from not paying attention.”

“Hmm. I didn’t know about those. Who even wrote those?”

Gemma shrugged. “I’m afraid I didn’t bother trying to learn the history of all of them. The only author I remember connecting to any particular law is your father and the one about El.”

“The what?”

Gemma raised her eyebrows. “The one that says the Luminary must be the one to represent Cobblestone in official business between the town and the crown, as long as he resides there?”

“What?”

“You didn’t know? That’s why we both come here every time, even though I'm the mayor. Well, no, it’s not. Of course he loves having an excuse to visit. But it’s why we both say the formal greeting at the same time. We’re not breaking the law that way, we figured.”

Jade pressed a palm against her forehead, grimacing when her fingertips found the crown. “I can’t believe I didn’t know about that. I can’t believe he made that a law. Why did he make that a law?”

“Who knows? Maybe it was El’s blinding charm.” Gemma shrugged. “Anyway, then there’s the one that says if you bring a duck into a mayor’s house, it has to be on a leash.”

Jade laughed, mortification fading a little with Gemma’s blatant attempt to change the subject and smooth over the awkward revelation. She made a mental note to revisit the law and fix it, later. “Guess there was another king or queen who was friends with a mayor, hmm?”

“I reckon so. Or a terribly annoying mayor, and they had to get them to hush up and leave them alone about ducks somehow.”

Jade laughed again. “You know quite a lot about the law, don’t you, Gemma?”

“Well, I had a couple of kids sneak in to my little library and run off with the law books, and then they kept trying to see what kind of lawbreaking they could get away with, so I decided I’d better brush up on it just to keep up with them. Though I’m afraid I’m not a very stern sort of mayor. I didn’t even get them in trouble with their parents for the off-leash duck. They got grounded over stealing the books, though. Don’t mind if somebody wants to take a gander, but I’ve got to know where the books are. I can’t remember thousands and thousands of laws at once, and most of my notes refer to pages in the books, not the details of the laws.”

“Ah. I’m a little relieved to hear you say that. Thought I was slacking, not having memorized every law ever passed in the kingdom.” Then Jade frowned, and her mouth twitched. “Hold on. ‘Take a gander’? After you were talking about ducks? Was that a bird pun?”

Gemma only smirked, dimples deepening in her cheeks, and Jade broke into laughter once again.

“Oh, my, I can’t remember when I’ve last laughed so much,” Jade said. “Too many people are too serious here all the time. The only one who ever really tries to make me laugh is my daughter.”

Jade looked over at El and Erik, agreeably following their niece in crawling underneath the long table to the far side of the room, and she heard Gemma laugh. “She’s a delight. Makes me wish I had one of my own, but, well, I guess I’m still waiting for mine to float down the river.”

Jade gave her a curious look. “Not interested in the traditional method?”

Gemma made a face. “Not really.”

Jade nodded. “Can’t say I blame you. She’s wonderful,” she said, looking at her daughter. “But her father isn’t, particularly. Ah, I can’t be the one to say those kinds of things about his family. Forget I said that.”

Gemma hummed sympathy. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”

“Sometimes I wish I could just turn off every last bit of interest in love stories, too,” Jade said. “I feel like every time I go to one of Sylv’s plays, I end up a little more melancholy than he’d like to know about.”

“Well, it’s not that I’m not interested, exactly,” Gemma said. She hesitated, then added, “But the only eligible ladies who move to town are all in love with El, or with the idea of the big, strong, heroic Luminary, anyway. Not really helping my case.” Gemma shook her head. “Sometimes I think about making him be the mayor, after all. He wouldn’t be awful at it, and then I could move away to Heliodor. There’s got to be a crowd of women somewhere around here who moved to the city because the new queen is beautiful and all-around amazing.”

Jade stared at her in astonishment. Gemma bit her lip, looked away, and reached up to run her hand over her bandana again. This time it came loose and slid backwards down her hair.

“Oh, dear. This is how I always lose the things.” She pulled it off of her head and tried to smooth out her hair. “Sorry, now I probably have ridiculous bandana hair, huh?”

“It looks fine,” Jade said, still staring. She was having a feeling, she admitted to herself. One of the sort she’d stomped on years ago and tried to get rid of, because they weren’t convenient. One she hadn’t let herself feel since she was young and only just technically a princess, and she’d imagined it was reasonable for her to kiss anyone she liked, because it didn’t matter who she married if her father wouldn’t acknowledge her anyway. One she'd approved for her daughter's future but somehow forgotten she could just as well allow for herself. “It’s just a tiny bit mussed, but some people go for that look on purpose. Looks good on you.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Gemma’s gaze flicked up towards her face for an instant, then turned back across the room. She plucked at the knot on the bandana in her hands.

“Ah, but if you prefer, I could help you tie the bandana back on.”

“Ah...All right, Jade.”

Jade meant it as an innocent offer, or at least she thought she had. Something she imagined one friend might do for another, if she’d ever had any girls for friends while she was growing up. Helping each other tidy up their appearance. She’d rebraided Veronica’s hair once or twice, after all, when the twins were too injured or exhausted to do it themselves.

But when Gemma moved her arms back to lift her hair out of the way, and after Jade reached to settle the bandana over Gemma’s head, next she had to thread her hands between Gemma’s upraised arms to reach the back of her neck and retie the knot in the cloth. Jade’s wrists brushed against the sides of Gemma’s neck, and Gemma’s face was only a breath away, and Gemma’s eyes were wide and fixed on Jade’s own, and it was hard to ignore the sudden little voice that said, _kiss her_.

Jade managed to ignore it anyway, because queens couldn’t just go around surprise-kissing their subjects without making things extremely complicated, but it was a nearer thing than she could remember since, well, ever since she’d reclaimed her title. When she pulled away, she saw little spots of red on Gemma’s cheeks, and she suspected her own face might be less than serene as well.

Jade cleared her throat. “So. You’re saying you might move to Heliodor for the right lady?”

“I might, at that,” Gemma said in a studiously casual tone.

“Hmm. If that means I’d get more of your company, I wouldn’t be sorry.”

“I always do love getting to visit with you. It’s a pleasure to talk to somebody else who knows what it’s like trying to herd cats. I mean, citizens.”

Jade grinned. “I’d probably ask for your advice on a daily basis. Maybe I’d even start to delegate some of the work to you.”

“Well, that would be all right. You always bring me interesting problems to look at.”

“And you always come up with some sensible solution that nobody can complain about.”

“I try my best.”

“Hmm. How do you feel about dancing?”

“In general? I love it, of course.”

“At a ball? I could arrange for someone to make you a fancy dress. Or you could make your own, and I’m sure it would become the new popular fashion.”

“Someone would have to teach me the steps.”

“I could do that.”

“If Your Majesty has time…” Gemma paused, then laughed. “Sorry, Jade. I got to thinking about you being a queen and all, again. But if you’re just Jade, then I’m taking way too long about this.” 

“Hmm?”

Gemma reached out and took Jade’s hand in her own. Jade caught her breath at the thrill of the deliberate skin-to-skin contact.

“I like you a lot, Jade. If you wanted to, you could have kissed me a minute ago. If you want to, you could kiss me now. We can just stay friends if you’d rather, but you’re making me think about a whole lot more than that, and it sounds mighty nice, if I’m telling the truth. Getting to spend my days with a gorgeous, brilliant, strong lady like yourself. So you just let me know what you want with me.”

A smile began to climb its way onto Jade’s face, and her hand curled around Gemma’s, but she let out a small sigh. “I’m afraid I’m not going to sound terribly romantic here, but I have a strict policy against making major decisions that affect the kingdom in the same day I come up with the idea. So I don’t think I can quite ask you to become my queen, this afternoon.”

“I didn’t ask you to make me your queen this afternoon, My Queen.” Gemma was smirking at her, now, bringing back the dimples.

“Well, that’s true. I suppose I could accept a diplomatic overture from Cobblestone, Mayor,” Jade said, throwing the formality back at Gemma to tease her in return. She felt a bubbling delight welling up in her as Gemma stepped closer, wearing a face like a midsummer’s eve celebration, bright and joyful.

The kiss woke up a hundred old dreams of true love and happiness ever after, and Jade let her hand linger against Gemma’s cheek for a long moment afterwards.

Gemma raised a hand and placed it over Jade’s, beaming fit to burst. Then she raised her eyebrows. “Not even a wolf-whistle? What are they getting into?”

Jade turned along with Gemma to look to the far end of the room. Erik stood facing away from them, rubbing the back of his neck. For a moment, Jade couldn’t spot El or her daughter anywhere. Then she registered El’s legs in the fireplace.

“El?” Jade and Gemma called in unison.

Erik jumped and backed away as they approached. “Kid wanted to check out the chimney. Said nobody ever agrees to show her,” he explained in a voice that got slower and quieter as he spoke, so Jade could barely hear him by the last word.

Gemma gave a long-suffering sigh. “El. Come out of there.”

“Sure,” he said, muffled. “Just give me a minute.”

“Now, please,” she said.

“Just hang on. Little stuck. Uh, I think the kid’s shoe is maybe sorta wedged in the way. Any chance one of you can come try and kinda, um, push it towards the corner and see if that helps me get loose?”

“What?” Jade said, feeling a little dangerous and letting it come out in her voice.

“Don’t worry! Her foot’s already out of the shoe.”

“He has to smell my sock,” came her daughter’s voice, muffled but laughing.

“Yeah, I do! Phew, smells like smoke.”

Gemma shook her head, visibly trying to hold in a grin at the giggles coming out of the chimney. “Erik, you do it.”

“Me?”

“Did you want to watch one of us put our hands all over your husband?”

Erik muttered something under his breath and knelt at the hearth, peering up into the chimney. “I hope you know you’re doing all the laundry, El.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t do quite all the laundry. Do you know how to do your own laundry, Princess?” Gemma asked, as the thoroughly soot-caked pair finally emerged from the fireplace, sheepish and grinning.

“No, I have servants for that,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Not today, you don’t, missy,” Jade said, picking up Gemma’s lead. “We can’t tell other people to clean up for us when we make a mess just for the fun of it.”

“Oh.” The girl looked worried.

“Maybe I can borrow a change of clothes and we can do some laundry together,” El offered.

“Oh! All right!”

“Hmm. Maybe Erik had better go supervise. Try and keep them out of trouble this time, all right?” Gemma suggested.

“You saw what just happened. I can’t keep them out of anything,” Erik grumbled.

“Practice makes perfect, Erik! I’ll stick around and keep Jade company,” Gemma said.

That knocked Jade right out of her focus on providing discipline, and she looked at Gemma instead, feeling another huge smile breaking out on her face. Gemma beamed back at her.

“Hang on,” she heard El’s voice say. “Did you...Gemma?”

She watched Gemma glance over in El’s direction and throw a wink in response.

“Finally!” El breathed.

“What?” Erik asked.

“Nothing! Come on, let’s go, let’s go! Laundry time.”

Jade finally looked away from Gemma to see El hurrying the other two out of the room. He threw a bright smile back over his shoulder before they left.

“Well, it was an excellent idea, but I’m not sure she’s going to learn much of a lesson with her beloved uncles helping her do her laundry,” Jade said, though she still couldn’t school the smile off her face.

“Well, at least she might learn how to do some laundry,” Gemma said.

Jade laughed. “That’s true. And I have to admit, much as I love all of them, I’m not sorry to let them go for the moment.”

“Oh, really? Any particular reason?” Gemma’s smile turned impish.

“Yes,” Jade said, and she reached to reclaim Gemma’s hand.


End file.
